Phil Jackson, president of the New York Knicks, during the news conference on Friday.CreditCreditChristian Hansen for The New York Times

By Mike Vorkunov

April 14, 2017

GREENBURGH, N.Y. — In a season-ending exit interview last year, Knicks President Phil Jackson gave Carmelo Anthony a simple directive. At that point, the Knicks were not in a position to win an N.B.A. title, Jackson said, so he told Anthony it was his decision whether he wanted to remain with the team. One year later, after Anthony chose to stay and the Knicks completed a 31-51 season, Jackson was not as subtle.

He laid out the same terms to Anthony, Jackson said, but he made it clear that the Knicks had a preference.

“We’ve not been able to win with him on the court at this time,” Jackson said Friday, speaking at a news conference after conducting exit interviews with the players. “I think the direction with our team is that he is a player that would be better off somewhere else and using his talents somewhere he can win, or chase that championship.”

After a six-and-a-half-year partnership, the Knicks and Anthony, their star forward, seem to be headed for a divorce. Anthony, 32, has two years remaining on the five-year contract he signed in 2014 that includes a no-trade clause under which he can choose whether he leaves and where he goes. But after a fourth consecutive losing season, Jackson seems intent on trading Anthony and proceeding without a player who has been an All-Star every year he has been with the Knicks.

Jackson’s comments were a shot of clarity after several months of cryptic Twitter posts and posturing that publicly soured the relationship between Jackson and Anthony. Wednesday night, after the Knicks’ season finale, Anthony said he would take several weeks to reflect and make his decision. The choice, he acknowledged, was all on him.

But after Jackson spoke, Anthony had a cryptic rebuttal. “REALLY,” he wrote on Twitter, along with two laughing emojis and his trademark #StayMe7o hashtag, along with an image of a smug-looking Leonardo DiCaprio from “The Great Gatsby.”

Whatever the Knicks do with Anthony is likely to headline their off-season, just as it did Jackson’s news conference — his first since September. In a session that lasted nearly 50 minutes, Jackson was expansive on Anthony, as well as his own role.

The 2017-18 Knicks could look markedly different from this year’s team. Jackson did not close the door on re-signing point guard Derrick Rose, his marquee addition from last summer whose season ended with a torn right meniscus this month.

But Jackson also would not offer unqualified job security to anyone on the Knicks’ roster. He said even Kristaps Porzingis was not off limits. According to multiple reports, Porzingis failed to show up for his end-of-season interview with Jackson and General Manager Steve Mills on Thursday, apparently out of frustration with the way the season deteriorated.

Jackson has a top-10 pick and possibly more than $20 million in salary cap space as he tries to rebuild this summer, but whether Porzingis’s unhappiness will be a factor remains to be seen. All that is certain is Jackson’s commitment to the triangle offense and its principles, which he reiterated on Friday.

“Everything has got to be possible, and we have to make sure that if people have something to say, we listen to it,” he said. “We examine it.”

While Anthony has not told the Knicks he wants to be traded, Jackson seems intent on pushing him out. He said that the Knicks had been approached before February’s trade deadline by teams that were interested in Anthony but that he had not found anything palatable. This time, Jackson said he would look for a return that includes a “significant player” who can fill the hole Anthony would leave behind.

Anthony, of course, may prefer to stay, but Jackson said he had already given him a counterargument.

“We haven’t won here,” Jackson said. “You don’t want to end up your career not winning. This is not something that you want to have labeled on your career. You want to get to that territory that you have a chance to win.”

Jackson disagreed with the notion that he had publicly critiqued Anthony at any point this season. Jackson said his assertion, during a December interview with CBS Sports, that Anthony held the ball too long had been “pure fact.” And he said a Bleacher Report column, which Jackson endorsed on Twitter, arguing that Anthony was not a winner and was too interested in his statistics was not negative.

Jackson said he intended to have a more hands-on role next year. He said he believed the season had spiraled away during the same period in late December in which he went on a West Coast trip, leaving him unable to stop it. He promised to provide more “on-scene” mentoring after a year in which he held a triangle clinic for Knicks guards and occasionally stopped practice when he saw things that were askew.

Jackson acknowledged that that approach could lead to his being perceived as a micromanager and as undermining Coach Jeff Hornacek but said that it did not faze him. Jackson picked up the option on the final two years of his five-year contract as president this year, and despite his assertion that his triangle offense faced resistance from players and his characterization of Anthony, Jackson said the team’s woes lay with him.

“I never took a jump shot, never made a substitution,” he said. “But the buck stops here.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page D3 of the New York edition with the headline: For Jackson, Time Has Come for Anthony to Go. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe